Netflix has the perfect Helen Miren movie as fans await seeing her in 1923 season 2.
Guaranteed to add a touch of class to any film — even as Jason Statham's mum in the Fast franchise! — she took her time to venture out west but got there at last when she was cast in the Yellowstone spin-off.
The show arrived on our screens in 2022 and she proved to be a natural frontier woman. It followed on from glittering film roles including her Oscar-winning turn in The Queen (2006), a tough army colonel in Eye In The Sky (2015) and a switch to comedy as Jim Broadbent's permanently exasperated wife in The Duke (2020). On TV, she was Jane Tennison in Prime Suspect and, before then, her stage career had already marked her out as one of the UK’s most exciting and fearless acting talents. Like the Dutton family themselves, she seems unstoppable.
Her return to the plains of Montana, alongside co-star Harrison Ford, is just over the horizon, with filming for series two of 1923 having started in July. There's no confirmed on-air date for the second installment in the saga of Jacob and Cara Dutton, but word is that the cameras will be rolling again in mid-October, this time in Butte, Montana. Audiences left wondering about the future of the Dutton ranch at the end of season one will have to wait for an answer, but everything points to the show taking an even darker turn.
Meanwhile, over on Netflix in the UK (you can rent the movie via various sites in the US), one of Mirren's lesser-known roles is in much the same mold as the astute Cara. In 2001's The Pledge, directed by Sean Penn, she's the psychiatrist approached by Jack Nicholson's retired cop to interpret clues in his obsessive search for a child killer. Her scene in the film lands roughly halfway through but proves to be a watershed moment as she turns out to be unnervingly perceptive, seeing right through his mask and making him reveal more about himself than he would like. It's a gritty, psychological thriller packed with major acting talent including Vanessa Redgrave, Mickey Rourke, Benicio del Toro and Patricia Clarkson, all of whom have little more than one scene each.
Today's Dutton family is, of course, the gift that keeps on giving. Despite constant challenges to their Montana empire, they're due to return in November (10 November in the US, 11 November in the UK) for the much-awaited second half of Yellowstone season 5. Having played patriarch John Dutton since the show's debut six years ago, Kevin Costner has already announced he's stepping away from the role, so his departure is expected to be one of its major storylines. But it's not the end for the family or the show. In August, negotiations were announced as being underway for a sixth season, this time fronted by Cole Hauser as Rip Wheeler and Kelly Reilly, who plays Beth Dutton.
That "fresh air and 'me' time" she yearns for so often could be a long time coming.
The Pledge is currently on Netflix UK. Yellowstone, season five part two, returns on Paramount Plus in the US on 10 November and the UK on 11 November.
A release date for season two of 1923 has yet to be confirmed.
